History, Nonfiction, State & Local, Gay & Lesbian 

Beginning with the influx of liberated veterans into downtown New York in the golden age before McCarthyism, "Queer Street" tells the explosive story of gay culture in the latter half of the 20th century. Coming out himself in the "buttoned-up/button-down" 1950s, McCourt positions his own homosexual experience against the whirlwind history of the era, summoning a pageant of characters that includes Harry Hay, Judy Garland, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote amongst many others. Mixing the theories of Nietzsche and Sontag with the history of the Greenwich Village, McCourt highlights the major events fo the period: the landmark eruption at the Stonewall Inn; the AIDS crisis that brought an end to the bathhouse culture; the ascendancy of the Christian right; and finally the social acceptance of gays that paradoxically marked the demise of queer culture. - from Amzon